Should Mariners bring Beltre back?

Adrian Beltre is one of the best third basemen in baseball, a Gold Glover with a solid bat. Or Adrian Beltre has no plate discipline and never lived up to his billing after signing a five-year, $64 million deal with the Mariners in 2005.

Adrian Beltre’s five years in Seattle have been hit and miss as he heads into free agency following this season. (Seattlepi.com/Rob Watters)

The perspectives on Seattle’s now-disabled veteran run the gamut, so it’ll be interesting to see what Mariners GM Jack Zduriencik decides to do with his third-base position going forward.

Beltre will undergo surgery on his left shoulder this week in Los Angeles and will be out 6-8 weeks, which means at best he’ll only return for the final month of this season.

No one is going to trade for him coming off surgery, so the Mariners now can only hold on and decide whether to re-sign him to another contract or go a new direction next year when he becomes a free agent.

Money is where the whole Beltre situation starts and ends. There’s no question he is a quality Major League third baseman. He’s as good defensively as you’ll find.

But no, he’s not the middle-of-the-order power hitter envisioned when Seattle signed him coming off a .334 season with 48 home runs and 121 RBIs with the Dodgers in 2004.

Yet no one in the M’s organization expected to get that Beltre. I recall talking to a top-level front-office person right after that signing and being told the realistic outlook was to expect a Beltre somewhere between his 2004 breakout and the 2003 season when he hit .240 with 23 HRs and 80 RBIs.

So just for kicks, let’s look at that outlook.

A Beltre halfway between those two seasons would bat .287 with 35 home runs and 100 RBIs. In hindsight, there’s no way he was ever going to hit that many home runs as a right-handed hitter in Safeco Field, but the average and RBIs seemed reasonable.

Beltre averaged 92 RBIs his first three seasons in Seattle before the shoulder problem knocked him down to 77 last season.

His batting average suffered — as do many in Safeco — as he’s hit .265 with the Mariners (including a .249 mark in the home park).

So now the Mariners know exactly what they have with Beltre: a .265, 25 home run, 90 RBI guy with a great glove.

That’s a very solid performer you definitely want on your team. No, he is not a franchise player, but he could be part of a winning franchise.

So if Beltre can be signed at the right price, I’d be all for bringing him back. Nobody can argue with Beltre’s work ethic and approach to the game.

But I have a feeling Beltre and his agent, Scott Boras, will want to get out of Safeco and into a ballpark where he can put up better numbers again.

Boras pushed hard to get Beltre in Seattle five years ago. He’ll push just as hard to get him somewhere else next.

That means getting into a Boras bidding war. And if that’s the case, do the Mariners really want to go down that road again?